GLOBAL METROPOLITAN STUDIES
February 2021 Newsletter
|
|
|
|
Welcoming New GMS DE students
We are pleased to welcome four new students to the designated emphasis this semester: Salma Elmallah, Meiqing Li, Annie Lloyd, and Laura Schmahmann. Salma is a PhD Student in ERG with interests in energy infrastructure, housing, urban analytics, city planning, and governance. Meiqing is a PhD Student in DCRP focusing on sustainable transportation, Asian cities, travel behavior modeling, and urban spatial analytics. Annie is a PhD Student in Geography, where she studies urban transportation infrastructures, mobility justice, racialized space, uneven development, narratives of place making, gentrification, and Los Angeles. Laura is a PhD Student in DCRP, researching urban economics, geography of innovation, employment lands, gentrification and displacement, and property markets. Please join us in welcoming Salma, Meiqing, Annie, and Laura!
|
|
GMS Summer Research Funding Competition
Students interested in applying for the Summer 2021 GMS research funding should apply online by February 28. Starting this semester we have a new application procedure using a Google Form. Letters from students' advisors will also be submitted according to the new procedure and should be submitted by the same date. To be eligible for the summer funding, you must already be a member of the DE. For further information, including details about Covid contingencies, see here. |
|
|
|
Xuefei Ren | From a Comparative Gesture to a Structured Comparison: How India and China Govern their Cities
Sponsored by the Asian Cities student group
The field of global urban studies has seen renewed interest in comparisons. A “comparative gesture,” advocated by urban geographers such as Jennifer Robinson and others, has been influential in urban studies in the last decade. In this talk, Xuefei Ren discusses how urban studies can make a leap from a “comparative gesture” to theoretically engaged “structured comparison.” Drawing from her new book, Governing the Urban in China and India (Princeton University Press, 2020), she will discuss four methodological issues for launching structured urban comparisons—case selection, causality, historical analysis, and wider implications.
Register for the talk on zoom here. For more information about the talk, see here.
|
|
|
|
Transit Demand during Covid-19: A Case Study of Bogota's Bus Rapid Transit System
Juan Caicedo
PhD Candidate
Transportation Engineering
|
|
|
COVID-19 has struck the world in unprecedented ways since the pandemic started in early 2020. One of the major effects of the outbreak and the lockdowns is the drastic reduction of transit demand. In several countries around the world, the effect on public transportation has been felt - in China, where the virus hit first, mode share for metro dropped from 26% to 14%, and in Wuhan, the transit network was shut down for nearly two months. In Europe and North America, transit ridership declined by as much as 90% during the first weeks of the lockdown measures. Likewise, the Inter-America Development Bank shows a ridership reduction of 60% to 90% in major cities across Latin America.
While the reduction of transit demand has been general, not everyone reacted the same way. In my research, I used smartcard data of Bogota's Bus Rapid Transit System and data mining techniques to infer the strata of a transit user and compare aggregate trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. The stratum is a socio-economic characteristic assigned to a residential building, and it is a proxy for income. Initial findings show that the reduction of lower-strata users' transactions is significantly less than middle- and high-strata users. Lower strata are returning to transit at a faster rate. While other studies have shown that the average traveled has decreased about 50% after the lockdowns, I found that the average travel distance for those who remain using transit does not change for low- and middle-strata but increases for high-strata. This is the first step to inform policy and decision-makers to plan and guide for a vertically equitable transit operation for the recovery period. That is, to provide reliable and efficient transit service for those who need and rely on it.
|
|
|
|
|
